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Friday, April 12, 2013

K is For Knope!

Welcome to Day 11 of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge here at
Reading on the F Train. Today's topic is Knope...Leslie Knope!

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Parks and Rec, through the current season.

Why am I turning over a whole day just to Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler's character on Parks and Rec) when my blog is about books and writing, you ask?

Because she's awesome, y'all. She's fierce and hard-working and smart and loyal...and occasionally totally nuts in the way that everyone interesting is.

Case in point: Eagleton. Now, I pointed out yesterday that Schenectady, where I grew up, was in many ways Pawnee. And one of those ways is that we had our very own Eagleton. We were a small city with very little money, surrounded by fancy, much more affluent suburbs. But the one that was within spitting distance, where rumor had it they could afford hydraulics to sink the ship into the stage when they did Titanic: The Musical at their high school while we were nailing together used plywood scrap to make rickety staircases for our sets...Niskayuna. I'm sure in real life there are plenty of lovely people in Niskayuna. That's almost definitely true. But I'm not entirely capable of rational thought when it comes to Niskayuna, just like Leslie and Eagleton:

Yeah. Pretty much.

She's this great combination of insanely ambitious and driven, and completely nerdy, both of which are demonstrated pretty clearly here:

("My name just came out of your mouth" was all I could think when I met Julie Andrews at SCBWI!)

And on top of all of that, she really cares about the people in her life. I love her relationships with her friends, and her romantic relationship with Ben Wyatt (played by Adam Scott) is one of my favorites, ever. I love this scene in particular: they'd been dating secretly, because of rules against intra-office relationships, but had to break up when Leslie decided to fulfill her dream of running for city council. After a few episodes of Leslie trying to spend more time around Ben, and Ben resisting, Leslie realizes that she has to listen to him and actually change her behavior, because she's hurting him. That in and of itself is kind of rare on sitcoms, but this scene just feels so real and Leslie is so vulnerable and I love it SO MUCH:

Anyway, there are tons more clips I could post to share my love for Leslie Knope, but instead, I will just say: do you like awesome ladies, hilarious jokes, and the best relationships (big-and-small-r) on TV right now? Awesome. Then you should be watching Parks and Rec.